BCM Additional Labor Costs Due to Covid

Project Leadership and Society 2 (2021) 100018

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Review Impact of Covid-19 on field and office workforce in construction industry Apurva Pamidimukkala, Sharareh Kermanshachi * Department of Civil Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, 425 Nedderman Hall, 416 Yates Street, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: COVID-19 Health and safety Construction workforce

A B S T R A C T The COVID-19 outbreak is the greatest global health crisis in many years. It has had a dramatic effect on workforces and workplaces all around the world, as it has spawned a massive change in the working atmosphere and raised the level of employees ’ concerns about their mental health and physical wellbeing. The construction industry has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and has been challenged to improve the safety and wellbeing of its workforce. The objectives of this study are to identify the health and safety issues that construction workers have encountered during the pandemic and to recommend management strategies to combat them. A thorough literature search on recently published literature, industry experiences, reports, and other related documents was performed to collect and categorize the required data. Seventeen COVID-19 challenges were identified and classified into five categories, and the results revealed that the lack of a safe environment in the workplace, heavy workloads, home situations, and concerns about job stability often contribute to anxiety, depression, and even suicide. Eleven strategies were identified to overcome these chal­ lenges, and the results demonstrated that redefining worksite safety by placing signs, ensuring a safe distance between workers, providing sanitizers and washing stations in the fields, and utilizing effective technologies would enhance project productivity while keeping workers safe. The findings of this study will help the project managers and authorities in the construction industry understand the challenges of the pandemic and adopt effective strategies that will improve the health and safety of their workforce.

Workplace Pandemic

1. Introduction The coronavirus, commonly known as COVID-19, is caused by the coronavirus 2 (i.e., SARS-COV-2), a serious acute respiratory disorder (O. (O) and Coronavirus, 2020). It has been reported that the virus can be transmitted from person-to-person and causes symptoms that include fever, dry cough, fatigue, and shortness of breath. As of January 2021, the virus had spread to more than 200 countries, affected 91.5 million people, and caused 1.96 million deaths. The most critical part of the outbreak has been its rapid spread and long incubation period (Hen­ drickson and Rilett, 2020). In addition to the serious health emergency, the outbreak has resulted in a global economic decline. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) declared that the United States entered a period of recession in February; they called it the “ Recession of COVID-19 ” (Chodorow-Reich and Coglianese, 2020). The U.S. had record-high un­ employment rates of 14.7 percent in April 2020 due to the economic downturn, which is appalling when compared with the unemployment rate of about 3.8 percent in February 2020.

The construction sector, like many other sectors, has been affected in a number of ways. Since the pandemic began, there have been fewer employment opportunities, partially due to the work disruptions that were caused by following constraints that were put in place to stop the progression of the virus, and a shortage of personal protective equip­ ment (PPE) that was caused by the more pressing need for it by healthcare employees. Due to an interrupted supply chain and employee shortages due to quarantines, many projects have been halted or post­ poned (urvey: 28% of Member, 2020; Rouhanizadeh et al., 2019). A survey conducted by the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) found that 28 percent of their members claimed that because of COVID-19 they had halted or delayed projects in the United States (urvey: 28% of Member, 2020). A shortage of workers is always a concern for the construction in­ dustry, but the pandemic has intensified it as a large percentage of construction staff has reportedly screened positive for the coronavirus (Karimi et al., 2018). As the propagation of COVID-19 is largely related to individual contact, encounters between construction employees have played a major role in the delays in reopening projects. Physical

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: apurva.pamidimukkala@mavs.uta.edu (A. Pamidimukkala), sharareh.kermanshachi@uta.edu (S. Kermanshachi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plas.2021.100018 Received 19 May 2021; Received in revised form 19 July 2021; Accepted 5 August 2021

Available online 6 August 2021 2666-7215/© 2021 The Authors.

Published by Elsevier Ltd.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).